Research Overview

Dr. Gray has extensive experience with the evaluation of neonatal care and the integration of evolving information technologies into the assessment and provision of care. He has developed methods for performing cross-institutional comparisons of NICU outcomes, as well as for performing large-scale evaluations of public health programs. With funding from the National Library of Medicine’s Telemedicine Initiative, Dr. Gray and colleagues developed and evaluated a multi-faceted NICU telemedicine program that provides individualized information and support to high-risk newborns and their families. As a faculty member of the AHRQ funded Center for Patient Safety in Neonatal Intensive Care, Dr. Gray worked with the Vermont Oxford NICQ collaborative where he served as a faculty adviser to NICUs working to decrease brain and lung injury in the NICU.

His recent research focuses on the use of computer based methods to study complex operational systems within healthcare. Along with Dr. John Zupancic, he used agent-based modeling techniques to investigate the cost-effectiveness of various deployment strategies for new technologies within statewide systems of perinatal care. In parallel work, he used data from a comprehensive electronic health record to identify the health care teams that assemble around patients and within operational units. Through the application of network analytic techniques, he is examining the relationship between quantitative measures of team structure and preventable harm in perinatal care and adult intensive care. In addition, he has created and StaffLynx (R), an innovative end user application that improves continuity of care.

About James E. Gray, MD, MS

Dr. Gray is a practicing neonatologist as well as a faculty member of Harvard’s Division of Clinical Informatics where he serves as its Director of Quality and Safety Research, Division of Clinical Informatics. He received his undergraduate and medical degree at Boston University’s 6-Year Medical Science Program. In addition to his clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard’s Joint Program in Neonatology, he received a Master’s degree in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health.